The Transcendent Power of Art in ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’

The Stories We Tell

Director Céline Sciamma decided upon two key omissions early in production of Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019). First, that there would be few smiles from the all-female cast in what became the first 70 minutes of runtime. Second, that there would be no music, save two scenes where it crystallizes with the power and emotion of a thunderstorm. “…you will have to find the musicality of the film elsewhere,” Sciamma said in an interview with IndieWire. “In the rhythm of the scenes, in the bodies of the actors.”

The film follows Marianne, a french painter commisioned to secretly make a portrait of Héloïse, the daughter of an aristocrat who resides in a castle on the island where the film takes place. The painting must be created secretly because Héloïse refused to pose for the previous painter in protest of her upcoming arranged marriage. She is quite literally trapped, her anger an everpresent flame beneath a steely expression.

Over the course of the film, desire between Marianne and Héloïse swells like the tumultuous ocean which they gaze upon while stealing longing glances at each other, until the swells coalesce into a grand wave of passionate hunger, a necessity for each other’s touch. Portrait portrays the yearning and desperate lust of an early relationship better than any film I’ve seen, all upon the tragic backdrop of the lovers’ knowledge that what they’ve captured cannot last. For Héloïse is betrothed to another, a Milanese aristocrat who she barely knows.

The lack of music in most of Portrait is jarring, and requires magnificent performances from the actors who play Héloïse (Adèle Haenel) and Marianne (Noémie Merlant) to provide rhythm to the love that we experience through them. Sciamma pulls off her unconventional approach, which she describes as purposeful, “to put the viewer in the same physical condition and frustration” as the forbidden lovers.

Sciamma meticulously establishes the two characters, draws out their building desire through furtive glances and suppressed smiles. Indeed, we don’t see them kiss until nearly 80 minutes into the film. That’s not to say there is no intimacy, but rather points to the mastery of the craft that Sciamma exhibits in showing such intimacy outside of traditional means. The tender framing, the lush sound design, the warm cinematography, the careful dialogue. All of it adds to a tension which grows so tight that by the time they finally embrace and commit to their love, emotion pours out like a gushing river in which the viewer cannot help but be swept away.

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